And there lies the problem. Our jobs only exist for the good of the nation, not for our retirement checks. Military folks often give way too much of a shit about their careers, and that's a major issue in the military right now.

That is the problem with a professional military. When you depend on an all volunteer force to be your military, you will have to have attractive benefits packages to get them to join and stay.

You can't have a all volunteer professional force then turn around and complain that the personnel costs of your force are too high.

And why should a military person not care about their career? So only civilians who do not work for the government get to care about their career and retirement? I joined because I want to serve for my country. But I would be lying if I didn't stay on for more selfish reasons in addition to my call to service.

Don't get me wrong, if the country decides to have a "Spartan" force, and I am not among those who gets to stay on, I will understand. I know that I exist because public policy demands I exist, and that they can just as quickly pull the rug out from under me. But it does not mean I wont have an emotional reaction to it. To ask me not to be angry about my career path being shuttered in front of me and a retirement plan that I had planned for changed is ridiculous.

The Army and its Soldiers will drive on, no mater what change or sacrifice we are asked to make. But don't act as if I am wrong for not wanting the system that I signed up for to change.

My comment was geared more towards decisions that leaders make based on maintaining or furthering their careers. In my mind, the worst thing about the Army, and the military as a whole, is piss poor leaders making shitty decisions based on what the think their bosses want, rather than what they know needs to happen. Leaders see their retirement or that next promotion as being more important than the people they are leading, so what you get is and overworked force with low moral dealing with rules and regulations designed to weed out talent and forward thinking and replace it with mindless drones waiting out their time so they can get a lifelong paycheck. You saying "well, there goes my career" is basically echoing this logic. I'm not saying that people shouldn't care about their career paths, what I am saying is that if more people made decisions based on the good of the force, rather than "will this get me my next promotion?" our Army would be a whole lot better off, and people wouldn't have to write articles about how to change the system, because no one would want it to change.

I understand what you are saying. But what else do you expect them to do?

Let me give you an example. SHARP.

As a Commander, I spent more time training SHARP than I did map reading. I had to dedicate four hours of the Company's time per month to SHARP, plus a whole day per quarter. Lets not even count administrative man-hours spent on SHARP. Did I want to? Hell no. HELL NO. Not that I didn't take Sexual Harassment or Assault seriously, but there are many better uses of time. I never even had a SHARP issue in my time in command. Those commanders that did? Much, much more of their unit's time was taken up with training that is not effective and only lower's productivity and moral.

But what would happen had I not? Do you want me to make a principled stand? I am not going to risk pissing off four levels of bosses to make a principled stand.

Bosses remember people who do not do stuff like this. Go ahead, don't play their game. See what happens. I have a family. I have goals in life. I am not going to sacrifice them for something like that. And that is just at the Company level. I can't imagine the pressure that leaders at Division, Corps and above have.

It is easy to tell others to not succumb to career pressures. And you are right on the face of it. But you are wrong in practice.